Sunday, 5 June 2011

Tourist for a Day

Staying with son T at his new house in Stratford, a quiet street, very international, though the couple next door are, says T, very friendly old Eastenders. After lunch we set out and walk first to the View Tube at the Olympic site which is populated by body building cyclists and a film crew filming a little girl running up and down, possibly for hours. From there we walk to Brick Lane, stopping for a drink on the corner, then to Monument, where we get the tube to Embankment for a Japanese meal next to the Festival Hall, followed by a spin on the London Eye, and finally by underground, back to Stratford. It is a long hot walk the long hot livelong day. That's more London tourism than I have done in the last fifty years put together, and it is both exhausting and invigorating. The Eye gets stuck for some ten minutes as we are on the way down. It is evening in the long days so Parliament is delicately sprinkled with copper coloured light. Not as many churches to be seen as I would have thought. Our fellow capsule travellers are, naturally, international. Down below Swiss football supporters mingle and drift.

Brick Lane has the ambience of a number of earlier fashionable streets - Carnaby Street, Portobello Road. It is full of life but it is if it were the same people as before, people who have never grown old but are doomed to enjoy amortality for ever, the shops and bars and eating places simply time travelling, everything vintage, everything young. Sisyphus in the rag and take-away trade.

An art college degree show to take in along the way. Final year work, neither better nor worse than expected, mostly imitative, mostly with a sheen of knowingness.

Artists' statements include 'My work represents our dialogue with the cosmos', 'My work tries to embody an inner meaning...', 'My practice examines the dynamic between humanity and the natural world', '...my aim is to explore and investigate thoughts and emotions, related to experiences and memories'. And beyond the cosmos: from 'Reference to the relational dynamics with fairy tale narratives has long been used within art to reflect upon a variety of socio-cultural concerns' to 'Inperfection is perfection and human nature is lifes infection'.

All typos are [sic]. The cosmos continues as before. I continue to try to embody an inner meaning while reflecting upon a variety of socio-cultural concerns despite all my inperfections.

On returning we watch Team America on DVD. Hadn't seen it before. It is pretty well perfectly pitched and very funny.